Sisters In Arms: Race, Empire and Women’s Suffrage

Speaking at a meeting of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Amsterdam in 1908, the US suffrage and feminist campaigner Carrie Chapman Catt called Britain the ‘storm-centre’ of the women’s movement. In 1908, it may have seemed that Britain was at the centre of the suffrage movement, but the UK was not the first country (by any means) to enfranchise women, nor the first country to have a suffrage movement. Britain was but one part of a worldwide campaign.

The British demand for women’s votes was not unique. Nor were campaigners working in isolation. By the 1960s, women around the world in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe were using their right to vote, having been granted legislative rights. Most of the world had only been granted these rights following pressure from female suffrage campaigners. Many of these campaigns, including those in Britain and the US, had begun in earnest in the mid-19th century. Popular imagery, especially in the UK – and during this centenary year – portrays suffrage as a purely British issue led by (white) women chaining themselves to railings, or marching in Edwardian dress. Yet women around the world were involved in similar campaigns and engaged with comparable tactics, to demand the right to vote.

Why, then, did Carrie Chapman Catt consider Britain the storm-centre of the women’s movement? As suffrage and political rights were the central issue to these first-wave feminist campaigners, the struggle was tied to western understandings of liberal democracy and parliamentary structures. The broad understanding that British democratic structures had been the model for many other countries around the world, including those that had been colonised by the British crown, underpinned contemporary surveys of women’s suffrage and continue to do so. Christabel Pankhurst, for example, was adamant that British women should be enfranchised before others, especially ‘Eastern’ women. In 1908, she commented on political reform developments in Turkey, admitting that, although Turkish women might be fit for the franchise, it was inappropriate for Turkish men or women to get the vote before British women, who are ‘more fitted for political liberty’ and the ‘rightful heirs to constitutional liberty’. Imperialist and Orientalist attitudes towards women in ‘Eastern’ countries, unfortunately, characterised much of the rhetoric used by British women around suffrage.

The focus on modern Western ideas of democracy and the political vote meant that issues facing women around the world relating to race, class and colonial subjecthood could often be ignored or obscured. The achievements of various suffrage struggles have been hidden to some because they were not victories that necessarily fitted into a modern Western model. It was only in 2015 that women were granted the right to vote in Saudi Arabia, the last country to do so, though only in municipal elections, with the monarchy controlling other legal decisions. Before the 19th century, women around the world could exercise the right to ‘vote’, but often not on national constitutional issues, as their ‘nations’ did not have such structures in place. In India, for example, women had been allowed to vote in village councils for centuries. In Sierra Leone, a land which had been granted to the British by treaty in 1787, female householders were entitled to vote in elections in 1792. When Sierra Leone became a British crown colony in 1808, women retained their right to vote, but British imperial interventions and reforms gradually eroded their rights. It was, thus, only officially in 1961 that women in Sierra Leone could vote in new national parliamentary structures.

Local and global

As the historian June Hannam has argued, although campaigns for suffrage happened within a national context, directed against a particular government, the wider suffrage movement had always been international because it was a common cause for women across most of the world. The fight for female suffrage had, from the outset, extended beyond the English-speaking world. In fighting for political equality for women, campaigners inevitably had to consider the position of other women globally, and the broader ramifications their vote might have. One such campaigner was Nina Boyle, a British journalist who had been based in South Africa, where she was a champion of black women’s rights and a leading member of the Women’s Freedom League. She was imprisoned multiple times for her suffrage activity and was the first woman to be nominated as a parliamentary candidate in Britain in 1918.

Suffrage activists organised not just in local or national associations, but also along regional and international lines. The International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) held conferences every three years bringing together suffrage campaigners from around the world and published a monthly journal (called Jus Suffragii). Founded in 1904 in Berlin by American, British and German suffrage campaigners, it was initially focused only on the US and Europe. As the enfranchisement of women in Europe gathered pace in the 1910s and as they looked to continue and increase its campaigns, the IWSA began to expand its definition of ‘international’. Women from the US and Europe who had been involved in successful campaigns were now keen to share strategies and ideas with ‘sisters’ around the world. Having failed to recognise ‘non-nations’ (i.e. colonised parts of the world), these western reformers increasingly began to recognise the right of colonised women to have a place in the movement. Despite pronouncements on universality, however, there were clear obstacles to the equal participation of all groups of women. Some were practical: participants in international conferences needed to take lengthy and expensive trips to attend meetings and so not only needed money but also free leisure time. Proceedings were also dominated by English speakers (although French and German were also popular and proceedings were often held in all three languages). The historian Leila Rupp argues that international women’s associations, dominated as they were by women of European origin, also tended to be Christian in nature, using biblical phrases and mottoes and peddling Orientalist assumptions about women in the ‘East’. At conferences where non-European women were invited to attend, European women often commented more on the dress and appearance of their colleagues than on their political campaigns. African-American Mary Church Terrell, for example, remarked after attending the IWSA conference in Berlin in 1904 that delegates were expecting her to have ‘rings in her nose as well as her ears’. Margaret Hodge focused on Mrinalini Sen’s seemingly youthful appearance and the colour of her sari rather than the content of her speech about Indian women in her report of the IWSA in Geneva in 1920. It was with these challenges and assumptions that women from the Middle East, Asia and Africa had to find a voice with which to discuss their own suffrage concerns and campaigns.

In the interwar years, as the international suffrage movement’s centre shifted away from Western Europe and North America towards the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, delegates from these parts of the world were increasingly encouraged to attend the regular meetings organised by more regionally minded suffrage associations. These included the Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference, which first met in 1928 in Honolulu. This conference reached out initially to Chinese, Japanese and Polynesian women (as well as American), but soon expanded to Australia and other Pacific countries. There were similar networks of suffrage campaigners in South America, the Middle East (such as the Eastern Women’s Congresses) and Asia (such as the All-Asian Women’s Conference). The organisers were women from these regions, and they publicised their activities through feminist periodicals and newspapers. This travel and contact between women around the world led to an exchange of ideas and support, as well as joint campaigns. Huda Sha’rawi, founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union, visited Rome in 1923 for the IWSA conference following the death of her husband. Upon her return to Cairo, she removed her veil in public, causing a stir and encouraging other women to do so as well. Sha’rawi became vice-president of the IWSA in 1935 and president of the Pan Arabic Union of Women in 1945.

Unequal equality

Suffrage campaigners were not always united in their local and national contexts, let alone globally. Issues of race and class shaped the experiences of suffrage campaigners and the ways in which women could access the vote, but also the ways in which they could network and engage with suffrage organisations. As Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar have discussed in relation to Britain, ideas of ‘racial superiority and Empire’ were inextricably linked to the drive for emancipation. But feelings of superiority and discrimination were applicable beyond Britain and the British Empire, too. In New Zealand, white suffrage campaigners in the late 19th century had not considered Maori women, but parliamentarians decided to include Maoris on equal terms in the franchise in 1893, following a question on the issue raised during a parliamentary debate (by a white man). Australia had a relatively short-lived campaign for female suffrage in the 1880s and 1890s, which was led by white women. As the historian Patricia Grimshaw has argued, ‘they maintained a solid wall of silence about the implications of the vote for Aboriginal women’. In Queensland and Western Australia, Indigenous Australians were specifically barred from voting. When women over 21 were enfranchised in South Australia in December 1894 there was no race bar, but, in 1902, when women in all states were enfranchised in Australia under the 1902 Franchise Bill, it was explicitly stated that Aboriginals (male or female) were not entitled to vote, unless they already had the right as they did, for example, in South Australia. ‘Natives’ of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands were also explicitly excluded from the Commonwealth franchise in 1902.

Similarly, in South Africa, it was only white women who received the franchise in 1930. Suffrage agitation was relatively short-lived following the formation of the Women’s Enfranchisement Association of the Union (WEAU) in 1911, an organisation that was exclusively white and followed constitutional methods of campaigning. The women asked to be enfranchised on the same terms as men, bypassing the issue of race, as it was only in the Cape that some non-white men were enfranchised. In 1909, the British suffragette Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence had noted that the protests in favour of enfranchising the ‘coloured race’ in South Africa had only discussed male enfranchisement and, apart from notable exceptions like Nina Boyle, or writer and campaigner Olive Schreiner, who left the Women’s Emancipation League in 1907 when they refused to support the vote for black African women, suffragists in South Africa did not consider political rights for black women. When, in 1930, the Women’s Enfranchisement Bill passed by General Hertzog’s government explicitly enfranchised white women only, there was no public opposition. In 1938, Zainunnisa ‘Cissie’ Gool set up the League for the Enfranchisement of Non-European Women, arguing that coloured women should be qualified to vote in the Cape like their male counterparts, but this lacked a broad racial or geographical base and soon fizzled out.

Fears and doubts

In Kenya, imperial racial hierarchies directly influenced women’s rights. Indians had asserted their superior right to the vote over black Kenyans, demanding a parity with white voters, who had been enfranchised in 1919. The Colonial Office agreed to give Indians a limited percentage of votes, but faced opposition from British men and women. An ‘Englishwoman’ wrote a letter of protest to the East African Standard, fearful of the threat of Indian rule in Kenya. ‘Do our sisters at home realize what it would mean?’, she asked, explaining that British women wanted equality between the sexes, but Indians treated women very badly through practices such as child marriage, polygamy and poor treatment of widows. These fears were echoed by the Kenya Women’s Committee, a London-based social organisation for British women who had lived in Kenya, which produced a pamphlet that was sent to potential sympathisers in Britain, explaining that the ratio of Indians to Europeans was nearly three to one in Kenya, so introducing a common franchise would place European women under ‘Asiatic administration’. Despite these fears, Indian men and women were enfranchised in 1924. Black Kenyans would have to wait until 1963 for full adult suffrage.

Segregation and the legacies of slavery shaped US ‘democracy’ in the 19th and 20th centuries, too. For some, the women’s movement in America was split along racial lines. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a vocal suffragist but, despite formerly being an abolitionist, she expressed concerns that African-American men might be enfranchised before white American women. African-American women led their own suffrage campaigns, though. Mary Church Terrell, co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women, was also involved in mainstream women’s groups led by white women. She had travelled and studied in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany and attended the International Council of Women congress in Berlin in 1904. But, although US suffrage was ratified in 1920, there was little discussion among international suffrage organisations about the ways in which African-American women (and men) were excluded from the franchise: election officials had the ability to deny them the right to register to vote until the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In the UK, the Representation of the People Act did not exclude women on the basis of race or ethnicity, but the British suffrage movement was neither active nor successful in trying to bring BAME women into the movement. Many British suffrage campaigners were also in favour of maintaining the British Empire and argued that awarding women the vote would strengthen the British imperial mission overseas.

British and US campaigners sometimes played active roles in imperial settings and in championing franchise rights in the colonies. Their interventions, however, were not always welcomed by local campaigners. In India, some women were granted the vote in 1921, but only if they owned property. During the 1920s and 1930s, Indian suffragists, led by the All-Indian Women’s Conference, campaigned for full adult suffrage. However, the British MP Eleanor Rathbone, who was a vocal supporter of Indian women’s rights, argued in Parliament that the Indian women’s franchise should be increased only in stages. Her suggestion that the wives or widows of existing male voters in India should be enfranchised first angered many Indian campaigners, who did not wish their democratic right to be dependent on their marital status. Rathbone was successful in her campaigns and in 1935 the wives and widows of Indian male property owners were enfranchised, as well as literate women. It was only in 1950, following independence from British rule, that all women in India finally won the right to vote. Meanwhile, in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Labour’s Drummond Shields encouraged women to form the Women’s Franchise Union of Ceylon. Initially the Union had only asked for a limited franchise, believing that any more would be impossible to achieve. Following various negotiations, however, in 1931 universal adult suffrage was introduced in Ceylon for all men and women over 21, without the restrictions that had been imposed on women in India.

Modernising agendas

The struggle for suffrage took place across the world, influenced by campaigns for human rights, anti-colonial struggles and nationalist movements. Western activists often tried to intervene, but women’s groups, especially in Asia, emerged out of campaigns for women’s rights alongside nationalist demands. From the 1910s, both peaceful and militant agitation around women’s rights grew in this region. There were close links between female suffrage movements and anti-colonial groups in Iran, Turkey and India, because discussion around the vote inevitably led to discussions around citizenship, subjecthood and independence. Male politicians in these countries sought to include women’s rights in their modernising agendas as well, keen to bring women into their vision of a nation. Suffrage victories, therefore, often came hand in hand with independence from imperial rule or regime change. When the People’s Party came into power in Siam (now Thailand) in 1932, for example, women were given the vote with universal franchise. The Women’s Suffrage League was established in Japan in 1924 and women were given the vote by the occupying Americans in 1945.

Although most suffrage movements around the world were not militant, Chinese women did attack the windows of the Nanjing Parliament in 1912. The militancy was ineffective: Chinese women were technically given the vote in 1947, through the Constitution of the Republic of China.

The march to progress was not linear, nor was winning the vote the end of the struggle for political representation. Women did not only have to campaign for the vote, but also for the right to stand for election; the two did not always come hand in hand. Some of the countries leading the way in the number of female MPs (or equivalent) are in Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Rwanda leads with 61 per cent of seats taken up in their parliament by women (Cuba and Bolivia follow with 53 per cent). Meanwhile, the UK, once seen as the storm-centre of the women’s movement, only has 32 per cent of seats in the House of Commons taken by women, lying 41st in the league table of female representation. It is clear that the right to vote and women’s equality was not, and is not, only led by western feminists. Suffrage was a global issue, women around the world had to fight hard for this right and, though there were often tensions, women organised internationally on this issue to listen, learn and help each other in their historic struggle.

Sumita Mukherjee is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Bristol and the author of Indian Suffragettes: Female Identities and Transnational Networks (Oxford, 2018).